Void vote on migrants deals blow to Hungary’s anti-EU revolt

Update:
October, 03/2016 - 11:05

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BUDAPEST — Hungary’s populist Prime Minister ViktorOrban has suffered a blow in his revolt against the European Union after lowvoter turnout voided his referendum aimed at rejecting a contested migrantquota plan.

Although a whopping 99.8 per cent of voters backed his bid to reject theproposal, overall turnout fell well short of a 50-per cent threshold.

Only 3.3 million of the eight-million-strong electorate cast a valid vote,and the National Election Committee declared the referendum void after countingthe ballots on Sunday evening.

Opposition figures swiftly called on Orban to step down over the vote,after rights groups had accused him of whipping up anti-migrant fears despitethere being only a few hundred asylum seekers in Hungary.

But the firebrand leader downplayed the significance of the low turnout andvowed there would be "legal consequences" regardless.

"Brussels or Budapest, that was the question, and the people saidBudapest," he defiantly told supporters gathered in the capital on Sundayevening.

"I will propose to change the constitution (which) shall reflect the willof the people. We will make Brussels understand that it cannot ignore the willof Hungarian voters."Orban did not reveal further details of the proposed amendment.

"It looks like (Orban) wants to continue his fight with the EU on itsmigration policy, and the constitutional amendment is his way of doing that asit might trigger legal fights" with Brussels, analyst Bulcsu Hunyadi said.

’Totally unrealistic’

The firebrand leader has emerged as the standard-bearer of those opposed toGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel’s "open-door" policy, in the wake of the bloc’sworst migration crisis since World War II.

The EU migrant quota proposal – spearheaded by Merkel and approved by mostgovernments in the bloc last year after antagonistic debates – seeks to easepressure on frontline countries Italy and Greece, the first port of arrival formost migrants.

But implementation has been slow.

Eastern and central European nations vehemently oppose the plan aimed atrelocating 160,000 people, many of who fled war in Syria.

"The target is totally unrealistic," he told the German daily Welt amSonntag, warning that disagreements over the plan could threaten "the cohesionof the entire European Union."Hungary has not accepted a single one of the 1,294 refugees allocated to itunder the scheme and instead joined Slovakia in filing a legal challengeagainst it.

Top EU officials had warned the referendum threatened to further split thequarrelling bloc, already weakened by Britain’s vote in June to leave the union – a decision Orban has blamed on the EU’s handling of the migrant crisis.

’Brussels elite’

The referendum asked voters: "Do you want the EU to be able to mandate theobligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without theapproval of the National Assembly?"In an editorial, Orban warned on Saturday that Hungarians had "a duty" tofight the failed "liberal methods" of the "Brussels elite.""It’s true that the campaign was exaggerated but no-one can tell me ifthese migrants really are refugees of war," Zoltan, a 38-year-old lawyer and’No’ voter, said earlier Sunday.

More than 400,000 refugees trekked through Hungary toward northern Europein 2015 before Hungary sealed off its southern borders with razor wire in theautumn and brought in tough anti-migrant laws, reducing the flow to a trickle.

Other countries on the so-called Balkan migrant trail followed suit,leaving some 60,000 migrants stranded in Greece.

Many of those migrants live in grim conditions in camps dotted around theAegean islands and the mainland, desperate to continue their onward journey.

The EU said last week it hoped to relocate half of them by the end of 2017.

A deal struck in March with Ankara to halt the influx looks shaky in thewake of a coup attempt in Turkey in July.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere meanwhile said Sunday thatBerlin wants to reinstate an EU rule, suspended in 2011, to return asylumseekers who entered the bloc via Greece to be forced to return there.

"We will take up discussions on this in a meeting with (EU) interiorministers" later in October, he told the Greek daily Kathimerini. — AFP